A large Chinese-registered barge was detained by Malaysian authorities after it was found carrying massive piles of steel ship parts and old artillery shells believed to have been looted from a pair of British battleships wrecked during World War II. //

It is suspected the metal was stripped from the nearby wrecks of the HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales, two ships sunk by Japanese torpedoes in 1941 just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attacks killed 842 sailors and the shipwrecks have since been designated as war graves. //

Looters have been known to target WWII shipwrecks for their raw materials. Known as “prewar steel,” the metal the ships were built from was untainted by radioactive elements created and spread across the world by the detonation of the first atomic explosion in 1945, making it extremely valuable for use in sensitive medical and scientific measuring devices.

Photos from the barge showed towers of rusted metal, cables, and maritime refuse piled high on the deck, with an excavator and large crane stationed nearby.